[Tutorial] NuMining with a Hegemon

[Chronicron]

Structure Introduction I. - Initial Steps II. - Setting that boy up III. - Mining IV. - Q&A

Introduction - what is NuMining?

NuMining is the new way of mining minerals that is progressively being implemented into our daily mining life. Instead of mind-numbingly spamming mining arrays, you instead have to find Resource Rich Asteroids, shoot their Fragments off and pop Ore Nodes to acquire Ore. The most commonly available ship for this task is the magnanimous "Hegemon", around which this tutorial will be centered.

I. - Initial steps.

Depending on which mineral you want to mine, you have to make a fresh restart ship. You're going to have to play as a faction that has a mining bonus corresponding to your needs. In the table below, you will find the most optimal restarts and NPC stations that sell a Hegemon. Yes, for purposes of this tutorial, you're going to have to buy one from an NPC station.

Mineral	Faction	Restart	Sellpoint
Gold	BMM Molly	CivilianBr BrMolly	Foyle Shipyard
Platinum	DSE Bristol Kishiro Samura	LiCorpDSE fcBristol CivilianLi CivilianLi	Hinsdale Refinery Construction Site

Don't be alarmed by Civilian restarts. Their purpose is for them to bring you as close to the best ship selling point without any rep issues and to keep you relatively close to the mining fields. Keep in mind that the Hegemon can be piloted by any ID regardless of its cargo restrictions. The reason why I suggest this method of acquisition is because traversing long distances in a Hegemon is not a good time, since it can't use Trade Lanes, and an NPC base is vital to our next step.

II - Setting that bad boy up.

New Haven - our next destination. Once you have your Hegemon, simply type /conn and undock. It will land you in Connecticut's New Haven station which has everything we need. Go to Equipment Vendor tab and purchase the following turrets in the following order (I will elaborate on every piece later):

Cruiser Tachyon Lance
Light Mortar
Battlecruiser Sunwreath Turret
Battlecruiser Voidstorm Turret
Mining Array

Battlecruiser Primary Turrets and Flaks are irrelevant for the mining purposes, which makes them obsolete, but you may still fill in the slots with Primary Turrets if you so desire.

Then, proceed to the Ship Dealer. You will see a Pimp Ship notification on your left - this is what we need. You're going to mount a White Headlight which will illuminate the asteroids for you, making their surfaces easier to discern. For that, simply type /setitem 07 WhiteCone , no need to type /pimpship prior - the services are available to you the moment you switch to the Ship Dealer. (thanks to @Ramke for proving that it works)

Now it's time to set up our groups. For those purposes, you will have to undock. You're going to need four weapon groups in total for this, and they're all going to look like this:

Group 1 - Light Mortar, Sunwreath, Voidstorm
Group 2 - Tachyon Lance
Group 3 - Mining Array
Group 4 - Sunwreath

To leave Connecticut, simply dock on New Haven again, type /return and undock - it will take you back to the base which you originally came from. If you used a Civilian restart, you're going to have to reach the nearest NPC installation of your desired faction and procure the ID. Make sure you sell your Freelancer ID and that you never have two IDs at once.

Congratulations, you're done setting up your mining machine and you're ready to dig! Question is, how does one use all of this?

III. - Mining

III.A - Binds

Half of the entire mining process is knowing how to fly your Hegemon. This ship is an unruly beast, it's slow and it sometimes pitches upwards from small flying asteroids, so be ready to regulate the alignment yourself without an autopilot.

The flying method that we're going to be utilizing the most is going to be Steering with Rolling, so make sure you bind your Pitch and Turn keys along with the Rolling keys, all of which can be found in Ship Controls in the Control Options.

You're also going to need Strafing binds which you can use in tandem with your Steering binds - the easiest way for that is to bind your Strafing keys identically to Steering with a Ctrl + modifier (for this, you can simply hold Ctrl while binding a key).

It goes without saying that you will also be using your Thrusters and Reverse Thrusters to travel from one Asteroid to another, so make sure you have an Afterburn and Reverse Thrust keys bound (if you for some reason don't).

An example from yours truly. I use Numpad keys because I have a side numpad on my mouse.

Naturally, for the whole process, we will be using First Person Mode (Cockpit View) with Cockpit being disabled in the General Options menu, so you're also going to need a bind for that. Whether to have your weapon groups bound to a hotkey or not is completely up to you, but it will simplify the mining process.

Last but not least, you're going to need an Auto Level hotkey. I'll explain later why.

III.B - Reaching the Mining Area

Your Hegemon will be stationed on a designated Refinery POB that belongs to a faction of your choosing. The POBs are listed in the table below.

Faction	POB	Location
BMM	Lisheen Logistics Depot	Dublin, 3F, On plane
Mollys	Connacht Depot	Dublin, 4C, 6.5k Above Plane
Kishiro	Ionic Industries	Shikoku, 7G, 2.2k Below Plane
Samura	Impala Station	Shikoku, 6F, On Plane
Bristol	Arcetri Station	Galileo, 5F, On Plane
DSE	Red Rock Refinery	Colorado, 3E, On Plane

We're going to start from reaching the Mining Zone's central point, that way you get the Resource Rich Asteroid spawns in all directions around you. Follow the navigation buoys to reach the area quicker as they're laid out through the openings in the fields. Hegemon has the same Cruise and Thrusting speed (of course if you have all four Thrusters mounted), but your Power Core will be drained upon engaging Cruise Engines, so choose wisely when to Cruise and when to Thrust.

Gold Ore	Platinum Ore

Once you're in the area, switch to the Loot Tab on your Bottom Left interface screen. There, you will see the Resource-Rich Asteroid spawns around you. Simply proceed to the closest one to you and you may begin the mining.

III.C - The whole process.

Once you approach a Resource-Rich Asteroid, you'll be switching into a so called "Mining Mode' with going into Cockpit Mode and turning your Auto-Level off - simply tap your Auto-Level hotkey once for that. Now your ship will forever remain in the alignment that you put it into without rolling automatically.

A Resource-Rich Asteroid has two HP bars - the HP and the Shield one. You're going to have to drop its Shield first with a Mining array - simply fire it at the asteroid until the shield drops.

From this point, you're free to destroy the Fragments. The best way to do so is to single-tap your Sunwreath turret, hence why we put it in a separate group. You can spot the fragments on the surface of an asteroid due to their unusual shape - sometimes they will be outlined, sometimes they stick out - give them a tap with your Sunwreath and you will quickly figure the Fragment pattern out.

Once you destroy the fragment, you will see Ore Nodes - pop them open with your Tachyon lance and tractor in the ore.

Once you're through all the Fragments and Ore Nodes, switch to your group with Light Mortar, Sunwreath and Voidstorm to finish the asteroid off - the volley will deal enough damage to instantly destroy most asteroids if you have properly exhausted their Fragments and Ore Nodes. The asteroid itself will also drop some Ore upon being destroyed.

With a mining bonus of x3, the amount of Ore dropped per Node varies between 55 and 80, while the asteroids themselves can drop up to ~200.

Each asteroid has a set amount of Fragments that you can destroy and a certain number of Ore Nodes. The amount of Fragments - and asteroid type itself - is hinted at by its total HP pool, namely its first number.

Platinum-Rich Asteroids

	2 Fragments	2 Small Nodes 1 Large Node
	3 Fragments	7 Small Nodes
	4 Fragments	3 Large Nodes

Gold-Rich Asteroids

	3 Fragments	6 Small Nodes
	4 Fragments	8 Small Nodes
	5 Fragments	12 Small Nodes

Once your cargo hold is full, all you have to do is tap your Auto-Level key again, return to a POB of your choice and sell the ore to the Commodity Vendor - provided that the POB has not reached its stock limit.

Congratulations! You're now a fully-fledged miner. Grab your pickaxe, embrace your inner dwarf and get digging.

IV. - Q&A

This section is reserved for Questions and Answers. Dev commentary and answers will also be included here.

Feedback is, as always, welcome.

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[jammi]

Very cool and good. Thank you for writing this up - Penn is also using NuMining mechanics for Heavy Water / Deuterium now, so it may be worth including some details for that too.

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News article library, feedback and content requests.

[Chronicron]

Penn is also using NuMining mechanics for Heavy Water / Deuterium

thanks for letting me know, will include that later

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[Nika]

I'm pretty sure you're missing out on Corsair ID for Gold mining.

[Chronicron]

I'm pretty sure you're missing out on Corsair ID for Gold mining.

will also include that later, thank you

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[Antonio]

Thank you for the effort, looks good.

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SNAC Montage Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Thruster SNAC

[TheKusari]

Very nicely done. The Guide Guy approves.

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Discovery's Best Faction:  Starfliers
Second Best: Liberty Navy 46th Fleet

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[Chronicron]

- Added Impala Station as Samura POB

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[Os_SK]

Single-machine mode cannot trigger?

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——Above, salute——

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[Barrier]

From this point, you're free to destroy the Fragments. The best way to do so is to single-tap your Sunwreath turret, hence why we put it in a separate group. You can spot the fragments on the surface of an asteroid due to their unusual shape - sometimes they will be outlined, sometimes they stick out - give them a tap with your Sunwreath and you will quickly figure the Fragment pattern out.

I may just be blind, but what is the visual cue I'm looking for here? Is the damage splash from the gun supposed to highlight the fragment pattern?
There are also times when I see the node location via subtarget, but shooting that area does not break off a fragment, and I just destroy the asteroid. Should I just avoid using that menu?

Regardless, with these handicaps, I've gotten down to a 15 minute hegemon hold for platinum (3x DSE id). What's a good number to aim for?